What I Learned Packing Lunch for a Semester

This epiphany was brought to you by the PB&J.

(Originally published March 31, 2014)

Before 2014, it had been 11 years since I regularly ate a packed lunch. In high school, I ate out or ate at home. In college up until now, I ate at the sorority house where I used to work.This semester, I wanted to try something different: I started throwing it back to 2003 and packed lunches again.

I'm three months into the habit, and I've learned a few things along the way.

A Packed Lunch is a Cheaper Lunch

I spend about $50 on groceries a week. That gets me through about seven days of breakfast, lunch and dinner. That means each lunch costs me less than $2.50. Compare that to a Chipotle burrito.

A Packed Lunch is a Healthier Lunch

Peanut butter-banana sandwiches, granola, clementines, et cetera. While I am still consuming high levels of sugar, my diet consists primarily of grains, protein, and fruit-based vitamins. Compare that to a Chipotle burrito.

A Packed Lunch is an Excuse to Socialize

Whenever you close the laptop and open up lunch, people relax. Any table can become a dinner table, and food brings people together. It's weird. But anything that can get a group of people to shut laptops for awhile is a good kind of weird.

Packing a lunch takes one hour of shopping on Sunday and five minutes each morning. It means healthier meals, cheaper meals, and you can lead the revolution for a proper lunch time.